


The Knock Knock Knock When She Cries

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom
Genre: Adoption, Afterlife, Character Death, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: The Killjoys and Mother War</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Knock Knock Knock When She Cries

Mikey dies fighting. He made his choice years ago to live as Kobra Kid and die as Kobra Kid and that’s what he does. Even though he’ll wake up bodyjacked, SCARECROWs using his meat for their own purposes, he can at least die with his mask on. Soon he won’t have enough brain left to remember what a Killjoy is, but he can crash to the desert floor with principles intact.

He doesn’t look to the left as the charge on his blaster gets lower and lower. He doesn’t want to see his Almost, his In Another Life die too. Bad enough that he knows that later Party Poison and Fun Ghoul will be listening to the traffic report, trying to figure out why they might be late back to the squat. He can imagine the look on their faces as hope dies, he doesn’t need to see Jet Star’s resignation too.

And then his blaster is at three percent and Jet is swearing and there are six Dracs still standing, and the sand is so hot against his face, why didn’t he wear a bandanna today, the sand is so hot-

*

He’s still himself. Kobra’s not sure how that’s possible, but he is.

A moment ago he instructed his limbs to move, and they did. Whatever the SCARECROW representative implanted, it must not be active yet. If he works exceptionally fast, he might be able to destroy part of this BL Ind. building before whomever’s supposed to be in control of him notices and shuts down his self-regulatory abilities. Kobra Kid heaves himself up and opens his eyes, prepared to bash his way through a door. It doesn’t matter how badly he hurts himself, five minutes from now he won’t be feeling pain or anything else ever again. What he sees makes him pause.

He’s not sure where he is. It’s not the bleached to stinking, white husk perfection of Battery City. It’s not any zone he can think of either. Maybe it’s beyond the zones, where the Pig Bombs first dropped. But that doesn’t seem right either. Those places are all fused splintered glass and enough radiation to make your skin peel. This is different. It’s wood and soot and things so worn they’ve lost their identity. It’s char, not chemical burns.

And there’s a woman in a black ballgown. She’s wearing a rebreather. Everyone knows they only protect their wearers from air quality, not unseen rays or toxins. Even if Kobra Kid can accept that a particularly spiteful SCARECROW ordered a Drac to dump him in the Beyond rather than take his corpse for manufacturing, no person would calmly stand in the Beyond with only a rebreather.

“Where are we?”

She roars. The sound is deafening, enough to make the ground tremble. Kobra feels it as he’s forced to his knees, clamping his hands over his ears. A spire in the distance topples. Then she shakes her head, long black hose swaying. “I apologise. I haven’t spoken in a while. We’re where the band used to play.”

He can hear her question, so no long term damage has been done to his ears. He waits a beat to make sure she isn’t going to bellow again, then asks, “used to?”

“They left. Everyone left, once the band called the boy.”

That doesn’t quite make sense to him, but nonsensical information is better than no information. It’s what made him listen to Doctor Death Defying, clutching a transistor radio as he hid in the closet as a teen in Battery City. He didn’t understand the slang, but he knew what the DJ was saying was important. “Why didn’t you go?”

“I can only leave if someone chooses to take me.”

“If I wasn’t dead, I’d take you.” Because that’s the truth of it. His last memory is of collapsing, and he’s not a Drac. He’s certain he’s dead. He can’t be upset that the afterlife is grey and black, soot and grime. It’s still better than the Afterlife packages Better Living sells to those stupid enough to buy.

“Death stops very little,” she replies. Somehow he can tell she’s smiling behind her mask.

She holds out her hand. Kobra doesn’t hesitate, just grabs it. His leather glove is still hot from firing his blaster. She doesn’t seem to mind. He turns and walks two steps the other way.

He’s back on Route Guano, hand still clasped in someone else’s. The difference is when his eyes follow up the arm to the body it’s no longer attached to woman in an impractical dress. There’s a child instead. Still a girl, but in jeans and colours suited to the zones. Jet Star is holding on to her other hand. 

That’s when it occurs to Kobra that maybe he wasn’t the only one to go to that other place. He looks straight into Jet Star’s eyes over her head and asks “just to check- we both got ghosted when the SCARECROWs came, no one hid our bodies, but we’re still not Dracs.”

Jet Star nods, eyes serious in the gap in the helmet. “And we brought her back.” He looks down to capture her attention. “What should we call you?”

Her voice is bright, for someone that lived somewhere so dark. “I have one true name, in the way that Smiths used to work iron and Tanners tanned animal hide. But here you favour aliases, so call me what you will. I won’t correct you.”

“Grace,” Kobra decides. Even in a patchwork vest she seems so elegant. Which Jet brings up next.

“You’re going to have to use zones slang in front of everyone else if you want them to think you grew up in the zones.”

“I’ll work on it.”

The car is small with distance. Evidently they didn’t come back where they left. Or maybe that’s how far the Dracs dragged them before they popped into another world. Kobra doesn’t question it, just starts the walk to the car. If Grace wanted to talk about how what happened did happen, she would have already explained.

At the bumper of the Trans-Am Kobra puts his hand on Jet Star’s shoulder. There’s something he has to ask him. It feels like a stupid question, and it feels like the most important thing in the world. “We got ghosted, and we’re alive again. Does this count as another life?”

It doesn’t come as a surprise at all that Jet Star knows what he’s talking about. “It should, shouldn’t it?”

The kiss is good. Good is rare in the zones. There’s surprising, thrilling, rebellious, righteous, triumphant. None of those things are necessarily good. But this? Jet Star’s lips on his, hands on his ass? There’s really no other word for it.

“Don’t you scum ever learn we patrol Route Guano?”

Kobra berates himself even as he reaches for his blaster. He should have known nothing nice lasts. More importantly, he should have heard the motorcycles. He lost himself a little too much in one of the first innocent things in his life, and for that he’s going to die, again, and probably get a little girl and/or abandoned woman killed too. And the blaster is fucking missing, not in his holster, because it’s somewhere on the desert floor, uncharged from the last skirmish. How fucking milkshake.

Grace walks forward and tugs on the Drac’s white pant leg. When the Drac looks down she roars, voice as powerful as it was in the afterlife. Kobra Kid screams, and can’t hear himself under the onslaught. Jet is bent over the car, hands clenched on the window well of the door. So much closer to the source of the sound, the Drac collapses. 

She stops. Kobra swallows, wishing he had some H20 for his throat. Jet Star comes back over to him, and slips his hand around his. The Drac doesn’t get up.

“I can’t fight all your battles for you. It’s what sustains me. But with my favour you’ll win more than you lose.”

That sounds good to Kobra Kid. He never wants to stop warring against Battery City. Guaranteed wins mean they can attack more often. He says as much as he hustles her into the back seat. He can see her grinning in the rear view mirror. If Grace really devours battle she’ll be full to gorging in the near future. He puts the key in the ignition and starts driving. When they get back to the squat they won’t tell Party Poison or Fun Ghoul where she came from. Kobra Kid knows they wouldn’t understand. And if keeping a secret with someone draws a closer relationship with them, well, maybe that’s another good thing he can have.


End file.
